As soon as she says it, we both know what it is, what it means, what it could mean.

We eat our sandy grapes in a cautious, wind-swept silence. Crunching down on the sand between my teeth with the grape juice squirting all up inside my mouth feels tragic. The sand tastes salty, like the weeping earth, against the sweet fruit.

I look into her face, a face that just hours before I held in my hands and kissed all over, still unsure. I see the solemn secret eyes that I have loved and feel a weight descend into my bones. Why did she do it? Am I at fault? Was I enough for her? How did I fail her?

I look again and see all the glorious laughter, all the sorrows, all the passion in that face, and betrayal seeps into my heart, that mixture of sorrow and rage. I feel that feeling as it begins tearing me apart from the inside, ripping all the pictures down from the walls of my mind like a rock star’s drug-fueled rampage.

Suddenly the wind feels cold and the sand I’m sitting on hard and I feel disgusted to be so close to her, to be so used by her. I know this is the end, at least the beginning of the end, this lie she told me this day on this beach.